The To Be Read Nightmare

Hi, I'm Becky, and I'm a book junkie. Yep. I am. I have an insatiable need to own every book in existence and will try to read them all before I go, even though I know it will never happen. 

See, I don't care that my to be read stack grows exponentially. It doesn't bother me one bit. In fact, once upon a time, I threatened to wrap them all as gifts so that my next book would always be a surprise. Some books, though, keep getting pushed down the stack. I take them on vacation and don't get around to them for one reason or another. Maybe they've been out for a while and I'm trying to get all my new release reviews done, or maybe everyone and their brother has already reviewed the book, or maybe *gasp* the book is out of print. Gotta hate when that happens. Still, it doesn't stop my accumulating more. So here's a look at two of the books that have been commanding space on my TBR shelf for a while now.

While I was at LCC, I kept my ear open for things the attending authors were reading. I love to poach books. I think I'm pretty knowledgeable of what's out there, but I have to keep listening for those brilliant books that maybe I don't know about. A couple of books that are in my massive TBR stack were mentioned as being particularly disturbing reads and me and my twisted taste immediately perked up. 

One of those books was John Fowles The Collector. This is one of those books that I will read before I die. I spent my time working at the bookstore debating about buying the thing and kept putting it off. Then I did buy it and now it sits waiting for my chance to read it. I think I have a fear of this book, though. A fear that it will not live up to the massive standard that has been set for it. I know it's a classic, but I also know the sinking feeling that comes with having too high an expectation for something. I'm trying to work on this, ok. I will read it. It will be horrifically fantastic. 

Anyway, for those of you in the same boat I am, or for those of you who sadly are not familiar with this particular book, here's some info:

Published in 1963, The Collector is (from amazon.com) an "archetypal tale of good and evil, a beautiful, idealistic young woman studying art in London is kidnapped by a startlingly ordinary young man who wants only to keep her--like the butterflies he has collected before her." 

Another of those books that was mentioned at LCC was Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train. Now I've seen some of the Hitchcock version of this tale and I'm wondering what was so massively disturbing about this book that one person commented readers in his book club couldn't finish the book. 

Strangers is the story of two strangers who meet on a train and agree to do one another a favor. One man is supposed to kill the other man's wife, and that man is supposed to kill the other man's father. And that's all I know. 

You can probably see how this fan of thrillers, horrors, psychological thrillers, mysteries, and such would be intrigued about these two books. One has been said to prompt criminals into action (something I don't believe but I believe they believe) and the other caused book clubbers to abandon it without finishing because it bothered them so much. 

Apologies to my friends who bought me the Highsmith book and kept asking if I had read it yet. I promise I will!

So what's hiding at the back of your tbr shelf? Think it's time to blow off the dust and give 'em a try? I know I do!